I think we need to be more vocal about the simple undeniable fact that ordering society around the priority "it should be impossible and ideally illegal for someone under 18 to see sexual content" is fascist.
also that "I* know it when I see it" is an absolutely deranged standard for determining what speech is and is not protected by the first amendment. we're not talking about art criticism here gang we're talking about whose books it is legally acceptable to burn, based on some guy's determination of vibes. and it's not going great in this country!
*a judge in a court of law, not an artist, critic, historian, art viewer &c
I'm sorta loath to add to this since the amount of traction is already VERY stressful lol but:
I think it's interesting how much the (very good overall) discussion has revolved around the question of whether it's harmful for teens to see sexual content. I think that's definitely a salient point, but... it's not primarily what I was thinking about when I made these posts! in fact, I think it reveals that we've gotten VERY used to thinking about the entire problem from the perspective of "what level of protection do children need"
my addendum about "I know it when I see it" was in part meant to point to the question that concerns me more: how is coercive state power employed against adult producers and consumers of art, people living openly as queer, kinksters, &c.
like, there's this sense that all of the mass censorship efforts happening right now and the legislative attacks on queer rights are perverting a basically good desire to "protect children". but when that gets redefined as essentially blanket childproofing all of society, it seems obvious that the only logical consequence is to start going after libraries, going after queer spaces, going after pride parades, and so on. if you are starting from this maximalist perspective on "safety", well, any child can go into the adult section of a library or book store and pick up erotica--that's gotta go! any child might be able to circumvent features designed to make spaces online adult-only--you should have to provide a government ID to private websites in order to access adult spaces! a child could sneak into a drag performance--all drag performances must be banned!
I also chose "fascism" there because I do think this is all tangled up in ideas about regulating nonreproductive sexual activities but that's just an off the cuff pronouncement not a theorization. it is conspicuous how often historically attacks on queerness, "degenerate" art, public funding for the arts,. &c has been linked to accusations of the "pornographic"--which as I noted, is defined simply, legally, as "the vibes are bad imo".
so I'm suggesting that part of challenging this stuff is moving the focus from debates about harm to children and talk about the very real material harm to adults that I think is intrinsic to the reactionary side of this debate, and being enacted before our eyes on countless fronts. which I suppose is just rediscovering again the logic of decarceralization and decriminalization, which proposes that the coercive violence of the bourgeois state does just as much harm if not more harm than the things (sex work, drug use, minor cases of shoplifting or "disorderly conduct", and of course pornography) that power is employed to correct or eliminate.
